Well, I hope this score was a good deal...

Living in Houston, it’s hard to find reclaimed wood. I was able to find a CL score where the guy was selling reclaimed cedar. To be honest, it looks like an old pergola, and I think it’s cedar… I know it’s not oak or pine which is what we predominantly have down here. He said it was Oregon cedar and that he got it from his father-in-law. The good news is that it was stored off the ground.

So any thoughts? Paid $180 for the whole lot. As you can tell, there’s some thick stock in there.

Also, any tips for working with reclaimed wood? I know it’s not painted, so no lead to worry about, but since it’s been outside, wondering if there are any bug issues to worry about?

There is a bee that likes to bore into cedar which I found out the hard way. Also, years ago when I lived in your neck of the woods, some woodworkers used to go down to the waterfront and get pallets from international shipments. I know they often got Phillipine mahogany.

I’ve done the inspection, and can’t find any nails or screws. Some of the pieces look like they’d be good for a nice, big dining table, and one piece in particular looks like it could be a good mantle.

Still curious if anyone has any experience working with cedar for furniture and how it turned out?

No tips for you, sorry. But, I am an Aggie who live in Houston for a while, so I can sympathize on not being able to find much reclaimed wood. I will say this though, there are two awesome lumber suppliers in Houston, Houston Hardwoods and Clark’s Hardwoods. I took them for granted while I was there. I moved up to DFW and was like “where is all the wood?”. So you may be short on reclaimed wood, but there are great sources for lumber in Houston. Go visit those places one day, there are both awesome and have great selections.

I can’t say if you got a deal or not. But I recently paid $270 for two eight quarter by 8 inch by 16ft boards for someone who wanted me to replace a couple of cross pieces on a pergola. But I’m sure that was a premium for that massive size. No special mystery to working with it, other than it is soft as heck, so try not to drop your hammer on it.